Архив метки: Neoliberal plot

Word War III the Latest Media Plandemic

“Always forgive your enemies; nothing annoys them so much.” ― Oscar Wilde

Published: 6 June 2022 ~ Word War III the Latest Media Plandemic

So, do you do it and, if the answer is yes, do you do a lot of it? I do ~ musing, I mean.

And isn’t there just so much to muse on?

Let’s take Ukraine, for example. When I say take, I don’t mean as in takeaway ~ which, someone suggested, is what the Poles want to do ~ I use the term figuratively, as in example¹.

I am sure you will agree that it is an excellent example, as it is virtually impossible these days whenever the need for musing arises not to have a muse or two about what it is the West is up to out there in Ukraine.

The one place where you won’t find that out is in the British media, because Britland’s media is far too busy making (you could say ‘manufacturing’) news than reporting it. They did it to you with Brexit; they did it through the Plandemic; and now they are doing it to you again with Ukraine. Why does the British government and its media lackies want to scare you shitless?

The simple answer, but not the whole story, is to get you to buy newspapers and to click on their websites, thereby enabling them to fleece gullible advertisers. Terror sells ~ but there is more to it than that.

It is ironic don’t you think (well, do you think?) that UK media is obsessed with speculation as to whether the crisis in Ukraine will result in World War III (it has certainly resulted in Word War III), which, incidentally, should it happen would make it hard to find the UK on the global map (not trying to frighten you, or anything), but continues to support UK government policy to pump shipment after shipment of arms to Ukraine, thus bringing the threat of Armageddon closer. Such irresponsible profligacy costs the British taxpayer dearly for something that to all accounts gets itself blown up soon after it arrives on foreign soil².

If the Labour Party was not so riddled with woke, someone ~ someone who is not scared to be called misogynist ~ could come right out with it and tell the foreign secretary ‘Liz don’t Trusst her’ that she is not fit for purpose and that perhaps it would be better for everyone if she just went home where she could try to do something useful like whip up a batch of scones. That something from the Labour party could then add that the money the UK is throwing away on its latest imperialist misadventure could be put to better use, such as donated to its favourite political hobby-horse the NHS, if only to finance the extra burden that will soon devolve to this commendable institution from the influx of merry migrants that keep grinning their way on boats to Dover. The logic is elementary but fundamental: more people in an over-populated country means less NHS to go round.

I know that there are an awful lot of Brits musing on the immigration fiasco, most of whom will never go beyond musing as they are afraid to voice their opinions, and I fully understand why. It is all so tiresome, is it not, having to prefix every honest syllable you utter with, “I’m not racist, but …” And after all, why should you bother? It is obvious that Britain’s political elite don’t or else the little overcrowded boats would not keep bobbing in. But then the difference between Britain’s political elites and you is that when the sh!t hits the fan, which it will (look at Sweden!) the elite will be going the other way and you’ll be left in the line of fire.

This tragedy is no longer one which is waiting to happen. It is already underway. But let’s not muse on that. Our current muse turns on the question: Is the British establishment placing the lives of every citizen in the UK at risk by openly suppling weapons to Ukraine, by its bellicosity towards Russia and by playing lapdog to the United States?

When nuclear war was first mentioned, which, in case you didn’t know was by the West and by the Brits, Sergey Lavrov, Russia’s Foreign Minister, had this to say:

“I would like to draw your attention to the fact that the thought of nuclear war is constantly running through the minds of Western politicians but not the minds of Russians.”³

Since then, however, the unthinkable, which also used to be the unspeakable, makes guest appearances on a regular basis throughout the UK media, so much so that if it wasn’t for Britain’s endemic violence and the UK’s cops losing the fight against street crime, the possibility of nuclear war would even eclipse these subjects.

Given the extent of the media-led psychosis and the paranoia it has imbued, it is hardly surprising that there are people in the Russian Federation who have begun to respond in kind⁴.

Time, do you think (well, do you think?) for British people to stand up for themselves, to instruct their ‘democratically elected government’ and its malignant media that enough is really enough.

There are, however, other ‘atomic bombs’ that haven’t gone off as planned, for example sanctions.

I sometimes get the impression that I am the only one that the West has sanctioned! Recently, someone sent me some money from the UK, and it arrived in Russia worth half as much as it was before the liberal globalists set out to cripple Russia’s economy! Am I missing something here ~ apart from half my cash? Did the West unleash sanctions deliberately to make the rouble stronger? Last month, the pounds weakness in relation to the rouble meant that I could only buy half the amount of beer that I would normally buy? Now, that is serious! Meanwhile, according to my family and friends in Britland, the cost of living is soaring and the standard of living collapsing. Ahh, but I hear you say, there is madness in our government’s method.

We all know by now, or should know, that the sanctions have been successful, at least in punishing every Tom, Uncle Tom, Dick and Leroy in the US and UK, but not, it would appear, in Russia. The civil unrest hoped for and orchestrated with the assistance of a certain ‘philanthropic billionaire’ has not materialised, and Russia’s special military operation appears to be going as planned. Political analysts opine that whilst the West may delay Russia’s progress in Ukraine, it will not stop it from achieving its goals⁵.

The extent of the West’s frustration is encapsulated in the ever-self-explosive rhetoric embarrassingly evacuating from the oratory orifice of the Polish prime minister, who appears to have ordained himself as the Archbishop of Anti-Russian Hysteria. Notwithstanding his ‘personal shame’ ~ ‘the personal shame of the Polish Prime Minister’⁶ ~ at least he looks good with his 1960s’ hairstyle and specs, but even those have not proved sufficient to dissuade neither US nor British governments from continuing to spend billions on military equipment bound for Ukraine, where off it goes to get blown up. Someone commenting on a media site waggishly asked, wouldn’t it just be a lot less trouble and considerably less expensive to blow these shipments up before they leave the US and the UK, thus saving the price of the postage?

Every crisis known to man {LGBTs, Its and Others} ~ or should that be ever manufactured by man? ~ has been a godsend for profiteering of one kind or another.

Evidence suggests that the UK establishment is profiting from the conflict in Ukraine by using it as a cover for the miss-management of its economy⁷: terror and hysteria make superb attention conductors. The strategy is not new. It’s merely a resuscitation of the old Theresa May ploy, “It’s ‘highly likely’ the Russians have done it!” Move along, please, nothing to see (or believe in) here.

But even exploitation, or so it would seem, is not what it used to be. I must say I am rather surprised that someone in high office has not yet implemented Plan A as a means of reassuring Brits that should the UK government over play its hand in Ukraine, thus sparking a global disaster, surviving a nuclear holocaust may yet be possible providing that mandatory lockdowns, mask-wearing, compulsory vaccinations ~ and WHO knows what ~ are rigorously adhered to.

I am convinced, however, that the endless stream of third-world migrants pouring into Dover is a crucial component of the UK’s defence strategy, guaranteed, I imagine, if not to act as a shield against incoming missiles to effectively deter any kind of invasion other than the migrant one, which the UK establishment appears to support. For surely nobody in their right mind would want to take possession of a country ravaged by migrant unrest and migrant-related violence, plagued by woke, cancel culture and, buggered if I know what else, ahh that reminds me, gay parades.

I’m not suggesting that lockdowns, mask-wearing and mandatory vaccinations would be any less effective than they have proved to be for anything else, but better the devil you know than the ones that make work for idle minds.

References

1. https://www.reuters.com/world/russian-spy-chief-says-us-poland-plotting-division-ukraine-2022-04-28/
2. https://militarywatchmagazine.com/article/russian-precision-strikes-destroy-major-depots-for-western-weapons-newly-delivered-to-ukraine-s-lviv
3. https://russische-botschaft.ru/de/2022/03/05/foreign-minister-sergey-lavrovs-interview-with-tv-channels-rt-nbc-news-abc-news-itn-france-24-and-the-prc-media-corporation-moscow-march-3-2022/
4. https://yakutsk-ru.translate.goog/news/armiya-i-oruzhie/id10004-solovyov-prizval-putina-steret-velikobritaniyu-s-lica-zemli-s-pomoshhyu-kompleksa-sarmat/?utm_source=yxnews&utm_medium=desktop&_x_tr_sl=ru&_x_tr_tl=en&_x_tr_hl=en&_x_tr_pto=sc
5. Москва не исключает затягивание спецоперации на Украине из-за Запада (pravda.ru)
6. https://www-mk-ru.translate.goog/politics/2022/05/13/yarovaya-nazvala-slova-premera-polshi-ob-iskorenenii-russkogo-mira-prestupleniem.html?utm_source=yxnews&utm_medium=desktop&_x_tr_sl=ru&_x_tr_tl=en&_x_tr_hl=en&_x_tr_pto=sc
7. https://u–f-ru.translate.goog/news/politics/u9/2022/06/02/338827?utm_source=yxnews&utm_medium=desktop&_x_tr_sl=ru&_x_tr_tl=en&_x_tr_hl=en&_x_tr_pto=sc

Image attributions:
Finger on the button: https://publicdomainvectors.org/en/free-clipart/Pushing-the-button/36285.html
Boom: https://pixabay.com/vectors/explosion-detonation-blast-burst-147909/
Atomic bomb blast: Author: Comfreak / pixabay.com; https://www.freeimg.net/photo/203289/nuclearexplosion-mushroomcloud-atomicbomb-weaponsofmassdestruction
TV smashed: Smashed TV vector drawing | Public domain vectors

Are Progressives Progressively Less Progressive?

Great minds think alike and think for those who will not think

Published: 29 October 2021 ~ Are Progressives Progressively Less Progressive?

In my pursuit of all things bright and beautiful, which is about as hopeful and hopeless as the quest for the Holy Grail, I read all sorts of things from all sorts of news media sources, some more dubious than others.

This was how I came across a media outlet of which before I was blissfully ignorant, in which the contributors continually refer to themselves and their ilk using the self-elevating term ‘progressive’.

Sounds like a bit of back-slapping aggrandisement to you? Yes, me too.

So, what is the definition of ‘progressive’?

The first definition I encountered was this: “happening or developing gradually or in stages”. And the example given was, “a progressive decline in popularity”.

This is interesting, because when we think of the term progressive in relation to the word progress, which I am sure is how ‘progressives’ use the term, we think of positive movement, of ‘forward’ and ‘up’, not, as in the example given, ‘negative’ and ‘down’.

However, if we allow ourselves a little latitude of thought, how many times have we heard the word ‘progress’ used ironically and/or pejoratively?

For example, a beautiful Victorian house is demolished to make way for a 1960s’ block of concrete flats: ‘That’s progress!’

Or an old church or chapel is converted into a cattle-market nightclub: ‘It’s called progress’.

From these examples alone, we can infer that ‘progress’ is like the small-print easily missed by the naive when entrusting their hard-earned cash to investments on the stock market ~ ‘The price of shares may change quickly, and they may go down as well as up’ ~ and that by extension, progressives, who see themselves wholly in a saintly and hallowed light, up there on a pedestal, can also belong to the twilight world, down there in the deluding shadows of fanatical devotion.

So, in simple, layman’s terms, what is this thing that calls itself progressive? In language other than complimentary, you or I would probably be tempted to say that progressive is just a fallacious synonym for the colloquialism ‘liberal-lefty’ and that the users of the misnomer have merely forgotten how the latter is spelt.

Are Progressives progressively less progressive?

The article that I chanced upon which goaded me to examine this aberration of linguistic etymology was published by an American online source, but there is no reason to suppose that the misapplication of the term ‘progressive’ is any less misapplied in Boris- as in Biden-land.

The article itself is not worth reading, so there is little point in referencing it, but the premise is a revealing one as it illustrates beautifully the way in which a progressive’s mind works, or does not work as the case may be, and the way that as a group, progressives have no option but to conform to an ideological status quo that is about as liberal as a straightjacket. Succinctly put, the presumption is that ‘good progressives’, ‘good liberals’, do what they are told to do, say what they are told to say and keep their minds shut whilst doing and saying it ~ although, as even the most cursory observation reveals, in average liberal circles (are there any others?) there is an awful lot more saying than actually doing.

What do you mean, you already know that!

Please, no heckling!

Are Progressives progressively less progressive?

The story starts like this: Once upon a time in America there was a progressive living out his life in the New Restrictive Coronavirus Age. This progressive was thoroughly adjusted. He believed in and followed unquestioningly every rule and regulation handed down to him from the neoliberal globalists on high. Lockdowns, mask-wearing and vaccination in perpetuity were things that he subscribed to and, as is the way with liberal dogma, if he subscribed to them than everyone else in the world, or at least his world, must subscribe to them too, or else!

Loyal, devoted and brainwashed, this progressive nevertheless recognised that there are and would be dissenters, but the last place, the very last place, that he thought that he would find them was in the progressive heartland of the town from whence he hailed.

Thus, when he discovered that a number, and quite a considerable number, of folk from the progressive place that he had once called home, contained people who, in spite of their ordainment, were ant-vaccine oriented, he was shocked to his liberal core.

Are Progressives Progressively Less Progressive? Shock!

Unthinkable as it was, a faction of the party faithful had turned their backs on the official narrative and instead of baahhing like sheep, ‘Jab Today Pay-For-It Tomorrow’, were standing together in opposition to enforced mass vaccination. What were these people thinking of? Why were these liberals thinking?! Baaaahhhhh!

Devastated and confused, the author of this painful piece twists, writhes and hand wrings his way through something that is evidently quite beyond his comprehension. His fruitless journey takes him not in search of answers but in a desperate need to find an excuse, something, he hopes, which will look like a hook on which he can hang his confusion and leave it out to dry.

The decree handed down to loyal liberal subjects from the neoliberal globalists on high is as plain as the muzzle on your face: everyone should vaccinate and never cease vaccinating until either the word to halt is given or when common sense has been eclipsed and the Earth has frozen over, whichever happens first ~ and I think, children, we all know which of the two it will be!

The progressive author of this progressive article openly admits, as if he is pinning a badge of honour to his rompers, that he has severed ties with people from the blighted town to which he refers ‘because of their views on vaccines’. By which he means views that do not expressly conform to his views and the ideological credos in which his views are parroted. “Thanks for being my father, but I can no longer speak to or see you again because your views on enforced mass vaccination are different from mine. Your loveless, progressive son, A.W. Anchor.”

Well, throw my rattle out of my pram! A typical progressive reaction: do not agree with what you say, do not want to hear what you say, want to stick my fingers up, er, in my ears!

He then asks (and note how illuminating this is about progressives!), I paraphrase: how can ‘vaccine-hesitant progressives reconcile their decision not to vaccinate’, presumably with a dogmatic, unyielding, inflexible ideology that says that they must vaccinate. Here is the punch line: do they, progressives, ‘abandon progressivism and put personal choice first’?

So, there you have it in a nuthouse: an either/or situation. The implication is that personal choice is not something you can exercise if you want to be considered a good liberal and remain within the fold. (There are those sheep again!)

Back to the self-illuminating manuscript: With no ladders in his progressive mind, the author of this curious work continues to slide down the slippery snake, until eventually, with nothing else to appease himself with and nowhere else to go, he lands on square one, which is occupied by a female liberal journalist. Unfortunately, this female progressive does not provide him with the answer that he so desperately wants to hear, but the frustrated witch hunt ends with her.

Englishman in Kaliningrad sees liberal witch on broomstick

Poor, benighted, fallen-from-grace, gender-certain, female progressive ~ and you may all shake your heads sadly at this point ~ she does not see “any disconnect between” the progressive values she espouses and her willingness to lean towards the anti-vaccine lobby, which, as the media would have us believe, is a demoniacal cult that must be confined at all costs to the ghost town Conspiracy Theory, a town that they have conveniently buried many light years away in an arid socio-political wilderness, a town that bears, some say, more than a passing and chilling resemblance to Auschwitz, not least because of the motto raised high above the globalist gate: : ‘Mass Vaccination will set You Free’.

“Well, hello there! Aren’t you Enoch Powell?”

“Go! Hence from here, forthwith. This is no place for progressives!!”

{The sound of sheep can be heard in the background.}

This poor outcast of a woman becomes, in one fell swoop, the personification of the liberal paradox: a first-class liberal who yet possesses enough resilience and independence of mind not to cow-toe to stereotyping mandates.

To excuse, pardon and absolve this pathetic creature is more than clemency can brook. In Victorian times they would have had her committed. In days of yore they would have burnt her at the stake. But in 2021, the next best thing is to cast aspersions on her ideological credentials and curse her for eternity. Should she ever have the temerity to air her heresies again, she can be sure of falling foul of those juvenile snotty-nosed know-nothings who play at politics in university crèches, known as student unions ~ led in the UK, naturally, by Oxford ~ and, with the help of the ‘ban them, bar them, block them’ social media mafia, will suffer herself to be finally hanged on the public deplatform of her own making. And doesn’t it serve her right! The deviating Bitch

Thus for all their progressiveness, progressives, it would seem, are not so progressive as to eschew ritual or to emancipate themselves from thoughts and actions that repeatedly define them as tedious and predictable.

For example, when neoliberals, those saints, those Gods on high ~ you know who I am talking about, the billionaire philanthropists, technology tycoons and the super-rich banking families ~ throw crumbs from their banqueting table, their otherwise submerged progressive pets obediently rise from the depths where no thoughts of their own are allowed to exist and gobble up what’s tossed to them, hook, line and sinker. This is the liberal way.

Like fish in a fish farm they mindlessly swallow everything that is fed to them, mistaking the net that draws them in as their masters’ reward for loyalty rather than see it for what it is, and all the while the clock ticks down to the hour of harvest festival.

Progressive neoliberal hook for the less progressive

In conclusion, therefore, the article submitted by the angst-ridden progressive is nothing more than a touch of seismic disbelief: ‘How could this possibly be?’ ‘How dare they think out of the box?’ ‘How dare these liberals think?’ ‘How dare they?’ ‘Just how dare they?’ ‘How?’

Is this your last word on the subject?

Why not grant that privilege to Nigel Farage. He’s really rather good where last words are concerned, and if anyone can put a full stop to this, then surely he is the man!

Farage: Western leaders’ Covid policy pushing us to a two-tier society

Image attributions
Man stopped by giant hand: https://openclipart.org/download/168136/1329075888.svg
Shocked monkey: https://openclipart.org/download/236668/Shocked-Monkey.svg
Boat in clouds with hook: https://openclipart.org/download/263243/FishHook.svg
Go back to square one: https://www.publicdomainpictures.net/en/view-image.php?image=278623&picture=back-to-square-one
Witch on broomstick: https://publicdomainvectors.org/en/free-clipart/Witch-with-broom/69518.html

Woke Watch PC UK!

Introduction

Published: 2 April 2021

Liberals are upset. The word ‘woke’, originally enlisted into the English language as a weapon to further their ideological aims and bulwark their arsenal of victimhood, has fallen into enemy hands. It seems that ‘white privileged males’, ‘populists’ and even a man who gets paid to be rabid on television, have wrested the weapon from the hand of the mugger. They, along with millions of legacy Britons like them, are turning it to their own advantage in an existential struggle to preserve country, culture, heritage, home and history.

In this series of posts, I will update you from time to time on the wokey pokery that, having been brought to the surface and accelerated by such a monumental political event as Brexit, threatens to undermine, destroy and eclipse what, less than a century ago, was one of the greatest nations on Earth but which now, regrettably, as a result of social engineering and state-sponsored sell out, is little more than Pandora’s Box in a carnival hall of mirrors.

If, in a wild and distorted dream or a state of unpardonable and gross inebriation you have even vaguely considered that the ‘liberal way’ could be progressively good for your country ~ or, for that matter, remotely good ~ let these posts serve as a moral reminder: Be careful what you wish for!

The Strange Woke Case of the White Privileged Male

The liberal left like nothing better than to label anyone who does not obsequiously and unquestionably conform to what Piers Morgan has described as their ‘PC-crazed world view’. Case in point:

For the first time in months coronavirus slips from its number one place in the British media slot and is immediately replaced by lamentable laments about race. It wasn’t April Fools Day when I read about the liberal media’s reaction to the Sewell report on racial disparity and caught sight of the shockless, but none the less discouraging, headline, “Pimlico Academy: Angry pupils stage mass walk-out at school’s ‘racist’ uniform policy”, but it ought to have been, at least then it might have all made sense … a little sense … some sense … no?

On the same day, 31^st March, it was refreshing to see something infinitely less predictable than a load of liberals all crying collectively into the same obsessive snotrag. It was the actor, political activist and leader of the Reclaim Party, Laurence Fox, the High Priest of Anti-Woke, whizzing across London in a traditional, red, open-topped double-decker bus, launching, in an applaudably British way, his London mayoral election campaign against that really nice Asian man, the Woke’s mayor of choice, Mr Sadiq Khan BLM, EU, AGENDA.

Woke Watch PC UK!

Mr Fox, probably best known for his co-starring role in the TV detective series Lewis, entered the political arena after he fell foul of anti-freedom of speech liberals and the predominantly liberal-virulent Twitterati mob for responding to a mixed-race university lecturer during the BBC’s Question Time who accused him of being ‘a white privileged male’. Such an accusation, he said, was racism.

Following the broadcast, the actors’ union, Equity, which is not at all institutionally Woke, called on other actors to denounce him. As a ‘white privileged male’, he had obviously overstretched himself. Racism, as we know, is a one-way street ~ or so they would have us believe. My only regret is that I missed the headline: ‘White Privileged Male Blacklisted’.

I am sure you will agree that there is absolutely no excuse for being a ‘white privileged male’. If you have the misfortune of being one, let it be a lesson to you. You should have chosen the race of your parents more carefully and ensured that both were on the dole. You should also sue them for not consulting you on your gender preferences before they had the temerity to consider giving birth to you.

Woke Watch PC UK!

Piers Morgan, formerly of Good Morning Britain (yes, that’s him, nice, quiet man, never got a bad word to say about anybody), himself since hounded by the same crazed hypocrites as Laurence Fox, Tweeted on Twatter:

“Laurence Fox hounded off Twitter for daring to challenge the virtue-signalling mob. The repulsive abuse & threats these shameless ‘liberal’ (*illiberal) hypocrites spew out on here to anyone who refuses to sign up to their PC-crazed world view is disgraceful ~ [Feb 24, 2020]”

Piers Morgan ‘lost’ his job at Good Morning Britain “because I chose not to apologise for disbelieving Meghan Markle’s claims in her interview with Oprah Winfrey. I thus became the latest ‘victim’ of the cancel culture that is permeating our country, every minute, of every hour, of everyday. Though of course, I consider myself to be neither a victim, nor actually cancelled.” [https://www.manchestereveningnews.co.uk/news/tv/piers-morgan-addresses-lost-job-20113944 [accessed 31 March 2021] ]

News on the grapevine has it that Mr Morgan, true to his beliefs, has not been ‘cancelled’. He is about to be reinstated (so he tells us), which is something that Laurence Fox has yet to experience.

Woke Up UK!

😉Next post: Pimlico Academy ‘protest’ and the Sewell report ~ one an exercise in wokeness, the other an exercise in futility

Further reading:
Land of Wokes & Snowflakes
25 Reasonable Excuses for Leaving the UK
Katie Hopkins Life After Twitter
Harry & Meghan: The Sad Case of Deja Vu

Coronavirus & The Ghosts of Christmas Past

Mick Hart’s Christmas Message from Russia (Not to be confused with the Queen’s Speech)

Published: 23 December 2020

When I see and read about the mushrooming angst as my fellow Brits try to come to terms with the first coronavirus Christmas in the UK, I breathe a sigh of relief that I am out of it. Lockdowns, tiers, enforced mask wearing, has any of it been proven to work? Is it just too complicated? Is it really a neoliberal plot to ‘crash the economy’? Most people that I know in the UK are following the advice of Frank Sinatra and doing it their way.

Here, in Russia, Christmas is not celebrated on the 25 December, it is celebrated on 7 January, since the Russian Orthodox Church uses the old ‘Julian’ calendar for days of religious celebrations. Under the Soviet Union, Russia was banned for the greater part of the 20^th century from publicly celebrating Christmas. Christmas trees were singled out for special treatment. They were banned until the mid-1930s, at which time they made a comeback but rebranded as New Year Trees. Nobody thought to ask the trees what their opinion was.

This will be my first Christmas abroad, and the first time that I do not have to worry about how I should be celebrating it. I say ‘should’ be celebrating it as over the years I have reached the conclusion that Christmas is something that you have to celebrate, that you have to enjoy, that there is an onus on you, an unwritten but widely reinforced prejudice that Christmas must be enjoyed at all costs!

It is not dissimilar to the rules of any other party. You know the scenario: you are sitting in the corner quietly enjoying a drink and some life and (R)soul of the party rushes up to you and says: “Come on, cheer up, it’s a party!”

Not that I am averse to Christmas. Looking back to my youth, up until about my 18^th birthday, we had some wonderful family Christmases. Indeed, when I was young, and right up into my teens, I looked forward to it, and not just Christmas Day but the lead up as well.

Coronavirus & The Ghosts of Christmas Past

When we were children Christmas was celebrated in the grand Victorian style. It kicked off at primary school, with Christmas carols and discussions about the meaning of Christmas from our esteemed headmaster, Ben Rowbottom, a man who clearly enjoyed Christmas himself. We made Christmas cards out of bits of cardboard, waterpaint and tinsel, and sometimes an Advent calendar, which we could proudly then take home.

As a member of the church choir, I would have been warbling Christmas carols for at least a month before the Christmas festivities commenced. One year we also performed a nativity play in church, which was received with such accolades that it was impossible not to concede that I was a second Laurence Olivier in the making.

We would decorate the school, decorate our home, choose and buy a Christmas tree ~ a real one, of course ~ sit down night after night to write our Christmas cards and even look forward to the not insubstantial task of Christmas shopping. Ours was a large family, and when friends and friends’ families were factored into the present-buying equation, Christmas shopping became a laborious task, but in those days it was looked upon as a labour of love, which, indeed, it was.

One of the most exciting moments in the run-up to Christmas was going to the supermarket to buy the Christmas booze. As I have said, ours was a large family and over the Christmas period three or four family parties would be thrown. I had no problem with this: family parties were enjoyable, others, alas, were not. Besides, Christmas was the only time of the year my father really pushed the boat out; for the other 364 days the boat was on a tight rope and very secure in its mooring.

Everything was so simple and so enjoyable then, so much so that it was easy to believe that Father Christmas would continue to drop down the chimney, eat the mince pie and swig the glass of sherry left for him, before depositing our main presents around the tree in the front room and the rest in boxes around the bed, until I was 65. All we had to worry about in those days was trying to sound convincing when we opened the Christmas presents: “Just what I have always wanted! (Sorry? What did you say? I can’t hear you over the noise of this very loud Christmas jumper)”.

Although Father Christmas stopped plummeting down the chimney at about the time we started to drink in the village pub, at the age of 14, looking forward to Christmas carried on until and into my teen years. As a teenager, I would spend Christmas Day with the family and Boxing Day (appropriately named) with my Rushden friends, a dodgy salt-of-the-earth lot if ever there was one, drinking over the odds at The Welcome pub.

The landlord of The Welcome, Ernie, was a cheerful soul. I can see him now standing on the elevated platform behind the bar, which made him look twice as intimidating as he really was, peering at the occupants of the bench seats that ran along the window. Old people used to sit there, and it was fondly referred to as Death Row. Said Ernie, cynically, eyeing the people seated on Death Row. “I hope they enjoy their Christmas. I wouldn’t bother if I was them booking a summer holiday.”

Coronavirus & The Ghosts of Christmas Past

These were the heydays of Christmas for me, after which, I am sad to say, it was all downhill. Then I entered a period of truly lack-lustre Christmases and even more appalling New Year’s Eves. However, I did get a perverse pleasure out of the office Christmas parties whilst I was working in London. At this time, I was skiving in the publishing industry, living my life in my own soap opera.

Let me say immediately, however, that office Christmas parties are truly the pits. After an entire year incarcerated together on No-Love Island (the office), all those people, who on any other day cannot wait to get away from one another, are now concentrated in one room along with their oppressions, petty grievances, festering confrontations, envy, resentment and old scores to settle, together with unlimited supplies of the Demon Drink. It is bound to go horribly wrong. How could it not?

There are many tales that I could tell on this subject, but my favourite has to be the one when after throwing a lavish Christmas office party with no expense spared, ie our boss hired out the function rooms at London Zoo with pre-dinner drinks in the reptile house (no comment), the following day at work both my friend, who was the production manager, and I, were summoned to the boss’ office, wished a cheery Happy New Year and then peremptorily sacked. My friend’s behaviour at the Christmas party had not gone down too well, particularly when the paranoid management thought that he was reaching into his inside jacket pocket for a gun when in fact he was about to submit his written resignation. He always did like a drama!

All’s well that ends badly, as they should say, and it was good, in hindsight, that this door slammed shut. Sometimes, especially in the early days of your career, you need to dust the boot marks off the arse of your pants to find that new direction.

Coronavirus & The Ghosts of Christmas Past

In later years, my Christmases followed the downhill trend. I never had much time for New Year’s Eve in England. It is a cattle market.

Once, whilst in London, I went out on New Year’s Eve day, and started drinking early in the pubs around Borough Market, the idea being that I would have had enough by six o’clock, would go home, crash out and miss the midnight hullabaloo. All went well at first. I was in bed before midnight as planned, but at midnight sharp a firework display at the Working Men’s Club at the rear of our house woke me up. The daytime booze had worn off, and I was unable to get back to sleep until five o’clock in the morning: Bah Humbug & Bugger!

Fast forward to the early 20s of the 21^st century. My wife had been invited to go to Paris for Christmas, and I did not want to go. I tried to explain to her that the Paris that she was dreaming off, the Paris of high culture, of little Parisian cafés and atmospheric nightclubs with cabaret and table service had been sentenced to death by Adolf; it limped on into the 1960s and had since been swept away by the EU’s culture-destroying multicult tsunami. In short, the Paris of the past was no more. Like many other capital cities in the western world, it had been stripped of its heritage character and consigned to a predictable, unpleasant and ironic homogeneity. My wife learnt the hard way and wished she had never gone.

Nevertheless, off she went leaving me to spend Christmas Day alone (nice thing to do to your husband, isn’t it!). I spent it sitting in our antique shop office, watching through the security cameras as families and friends rolled up at our neighbour’s for Christmas. It was a surreal experience, made more so by the beans on toast I had for Christmas lunch. It felt as if the world was having a Christmas party and I had not been invited. In a word, it was blissful.

This time last year I was in England, staying with a friend. It was just the two of us. Christmas day brought brilliant sunshine. We went to the pub. The streets were deserted and even without coronavirus constraints the Banker’s Draft in Bedford was exceedingly quiet.

Coronavirus & The Ghosts of Christmas Past: The Banker's Draft, Bedford, UK — **Mick Hart, Christmas Day 2019 in the Banker’s Draft, Bedford, wondering whether he had travelled forward in time to Christmas 2020?**

The pub shut promptly at two o’clock, and the only people on Bedford’s High Street were two young Polish workers. I knew that look and that feeling: They had obviously had a damned good drinking session the night before, were well hungover and in need of a fix.

When they asked us which pubs were open, this was a tough one. After all, this was England, the land of childlike opening hours. It had not been that long ago when we had been led to believe that British pubs would be adopting continental opening hours. Pubs, we had been told, would be open all day and, as a result, the country would sink into the abyss of chronic alcoholism, anti-social behaviour and unspeakable depravity. It never happened, possibly because with or without the extension to the licensing laws, it already had.

The pub we had just exited from was on the verge of closing for the day, and the Polish lads had posed us a difficult question, but then good old Wetherspoons sprang into my mind, and the Polish lads were saved.

Coronavirus & The Ghosts of Christmas Past: Bedford Hight Street, Christmas Day 2019 — **Bedford High Street, Christmas Day, 2019. Was this a rehearsal for this year’s Christmas lockdown?**

My friend and I walked down to the Embankment in the hope that there might be some life there, but this wonderful old pub/hotel was as dark as Kipling’s chocolate cake, so there was nothing left to do but return to my friend’s house for a makeshift Christmas lunch. Luckily, our last bid gambit paid off. The nearby Ship was open, and open until 5pm.

**Embankment Hotel, Bedford** (**2019).**

I must confess that, with the exception of when I was young, Christmas has always been problematic for me. I’m not a Knees-up Mother Brown type, loathe loud, vulgar and jostling pubs and avoid parties like the plague.

In the run up to Christmas, the UK becomes a truly awful place. The pubs are packed, usually with a surfeit of people who, thankfully, you never see at any other time of the year. Drunken hysteria sets in, anti-social behaviour rockets, every street corner has a pool of vomit on it and all sense of dignity and social etiquette ~ what is left of it ~ runs for cover. I have never been able to fathom whether this Bedlam, this parody of a Victorian lunatic asylum, is the product of mass excitement leading into Christmas Day or mass despair as the anti-climax approaches. There is little doubt, however, that the hysteria stems from 12 months of wage-slave institutionalisation. At the end of the year, those who have slaved to make money for their bosses are given a two-week holiday to spend the money that they have managed to save in a bumper spending spree that will line the pockets of a privileged few. What does it matter if the masses all drink more, too much, and what is a bit of bad behaviour as long as it oils their purses and wallets and keeps those Christmas tills jangling!

This year even the Bah Humbugs have been deprived of their anti-pleasure. By all that is written and read, this year Brits face a Christmas so monstrous, so unbelievably harsh that even Scrooge himself would welcome the ghost of Christmas Past.

I know that you won’t believe this, but I am often accused of being one of that fraternity who regards half a glass of beer as being half empty and not half full, but I would argue otherwise. This festive season, for example, with its tiers, lockdowns, bubbles, restrictions, limitations … is truly a Christmas with a difference. It is the first Christmas of its kind, and may we hopefully say the last, so just try to look at it this way: You are taking part in history. You are living through an event which will be a source of nostalgic fascination and intellectual examination by generations to come. You are a living piece of history about which someone, somewhere out there in the future even now beyond your grave is already examining, re-examining and writing about ‘that difficult time’, the 2020s. They are digging for the truth and History will judge …

Thus, this is not just any old Christmas — it is the contentious coronavirus Christmas of the Year of Our Lord 2020. And when you think of it like this, somehow it seems to put everything clearly into perspective …

Skelet saying Happy Christmas to customers of our antique shop. — **Our Skelet wishing customers Happy Christmas 2017.**

🤦‍♂️🤦‍♂️Misinformation or simply mis-management? Mixing in Pubs & at Home Illegal!

Feature image: ‘Marley’s Ghost’ in the Public Domain
[https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:%27Scrooge_and_the_Ghost_of_Marley%27_by_Arthur_Rackham.jpg] {Link inactive as at 12/04/2022]